Zebra Mussels, Botulism Work Together To Kill Thousands Of Migratory Birds In Great Lakes

[hatrack]

The bird die-off was obvious as soon as Gary Rentrop and his English setter turned onto the Lake Michigan shore. The sugar-white sand, long buried in the crushed gray shells of invasive mussels and mats of rotting algae was now, suddenly, littered with dead birds. "It was almost like a war zone of birds," said Rentrop, a Michigan lawyer who recalled his November stroll along a Michigan beach. Rentrop counted 80 carcasses on a remote mile of beach near Cross Village, just a fraction of the estimated thousands of dead mergansers, gulls, loons and other birds whose migration last autumn ended in deadly poisoning from Type E botulism on Lake Michigan.

The mounting toll on migrating birds has stoked fears among researchers and ecologists that blame for the deaths lies with invasive populations of zebra mussels and round gobies -- which arrived in ballast tanks in the 1980s and 1990s -- spreading over the Great Lakes and effectively creating a new food chain. Zebra mussels and their deep-water kin, quagga mussels, filter naturally occurring botulism and other toxins from the water. Gobies eat the mussels, and birds, in turn, eat the gobies.

Scientists theorize this new food chain is concentrating botulism and other toxins and passing them up to predators. The theory is the subject of a handful of scientific papers and upcoming research proposals.

Whatever the mechanism of transmitting the botulism, scientists in 1999 counted 311 birds in Lake Erie that appeared to die of it. The next year they counted 8,000, and the toll has remained in the thousands in the Great Lakes every year since. And instead of fading quickly as outbreaks did in decades past, the toxin has spread -- first through Lakes Erie and Ontario, then Huron. In 2006, Lake Michigan was the most recent lake to be affected and by last autumn was one of the hardest hit.

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-loons_15jan15,0,3261885.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout

[phantom power]

1. I feel doomed today. Does anybody else feel doomed?

[hatrack]

2. Yes, of course . . . but once the initial burning sensation settle down to a mellow "tingle" . . .

You don't notice nearly so much!

:evilgrin:

[phantom power]

3. Mmm. Like fine whiskey...

First you stun your nervous system, then you can properly appreciate the flavors.